AN: A bit of unapologetic shmoop in this chapter (and a whole lot more to come in a couple chapters). I hope it's not too slow, but it's mostly dialogue. This is maybe a little lower on the action than normal for me. Also, I totally changed the mythology on the creature and its origins. You should look up the real thing. You should actually read up on Celtic mythology if you haven't…it's fascinating.

scootersmom: You're not wrong! You know I'm not very nice to the boys…oops.

sfaulkenberry: You have no idea how happy I am to read all your really nice comments! You said so many nice things! I found there to be something disjointed about the ep, though it had its really sad moments. Not going to say anything more because I try to avoid spoilers. Still, so glad you're "thrilled" to read this and that you don't find the premise to be tired. Please keep commenting (she asked pathetically).

ScealaiTheRakker: Ruh-roh. Maybe this chapter will help things! Or maybe the fact that the next chapter is mostly written already? *fingers crossed*

Lena: Don't be mad! LOL Remember Dean's face after punching Cas in the angel's fancy room? And after punching the naked cupid guy? I was thinking about that because it makes me laugh. And I knew the Misery line had been used, but I couldn't remember when until you reminded me. And I just wanted to let you know I hadn't forgotten your plot bunnies. And *insert curse word* do I wish I could figure out PMs so we could chat about them. *le sigh*

Dean stared for a moment, like his brain refused to absorb what his friend was saying. "What do you – is his brain bleeding? Physically injured?"

"No, it is a psychic wound." Cas shook his head when Dean offered a hand, and stood up straight on his own. "And Sam has…many psychic scars." Oh, the weight of those words. The heaviness of the guilt on Cas' face. He was undoubtedly thinking of the scars he'd caused when he'd smashed the wall in Sam's mind so many years ago.

Dean just nodded. They'd forgiven Cas, but he was very Winchester in his inability to forgive himself. "Okay. You good? Think you can watch the English Patient for a couple minutes? I'm getting the cause of all this."

Cas nodded again, looking at Sam critically. The object of his scrutiny sat slumped in the chair, hands now limp on his lap. "Sam? Can you hear me?" asked Cas softly. "I know you are in pain. But if you can talk to me, it would help if we can figure out which of your memories are affected."

Sam looked at his hands, turning them over so his palms were facing up. "I guess. I…I…you…"

"I know it hurts. Do you know who I am? What I am?"

"Castiel," responded Sam, carefully. "In the game, Castiel is, um – "

"No, Sam. Not a game. Reality. I am real, and you call me Cas. And I am…"

"An angel."

"Sam, look." Cas centered himself and stood straight. Then, with effort, he allowed his eyes to glow electric blue and a little of his halo to show. Sam blinked heavily but didn't otherwise react. Cas let it go and leaned on the table again. "Sam, you are showing signs of shock. May I help?"

"An angel," interrupted a derisive voice. "Heaven's offal has been polluting the earth way too much lately."

Dean stood in the doorway with Robin, wrists and ankles still chained, in tow. "I know what you are, creature," responded Cas, coldly emotionless. Speaking to Dean, he said, "It told you its name is Robin MacNaBreanna. That means child of the crow. That is what the children of the Morrigan called themselves."

"That's right," the captive sneered. "Mother may be dead, but I carry her power."

Cas spoke as if he hadn't heard anything. "It is not a child of the Morrigan. She and all her children were killed by her sisters, because they caused death wherever they went. It was rumored that they challenged Death, the horseman, and he united the rest of the Celtic pantheon against her. They tried to eliminate the entire bloodline, but a few of the rats escaped. It was decided that they were too weak to matter. This is a great-grandchild at best, only powerful enough to work memory magic and shapeshift into its base form."

"Wow, Cas. That sounded personal." Dean was surprised by the level of disgust his friend showed.

"The Morrigan was nothing but a nuisance until Lucifer found her. He is the one who nurtured her hatred of humanity. She was his failsafe in case his plan to convince God to kill all humans after the corruption in the Garden failed. I doubt he expected to be put in the Cage, but he did have a backup plan, and she was it. She tried to give birth to her own army. And she killed many angels before she was killed."

"She would have killed them all," smiled Robin. "All humans, too." He sighed as if in reminiscence. "I don't kill many, but I do like to…break things. When I saw this brotherly bond, I admit I was fascinated. I didn't want to kill those who have been responsible for so much chaos. I just wanted to play a little. I wanted to see what happened to one brother if the other dissolved that bond. It's unique, you know. I've never seen anything like it. Or I hadn't. It's breaking down now, isn't it?" He lifted his hands, and they sparked.

"Get away from him, Dean," called Cas, tackling the demigod.

Robin laughed again, that high pitched cackle. "Do not worry, angel. I won't hurt Dean. I want to watch what happens."

Cas' eyes narrowed, and he lifted a hand. "Wait, Cas!" warned Dean. "We might need him to fix Sam."

Robin just kept laughing, making Dean wish they could just smite him and get it over with. "There is no fixing him. By the way, did you lose something?"

Dean turned with a curse or five. Sam was gone. "Stay with bird brain," ordered Dean with a near growl. He knew Sam couldn't have gotten past them to head for the garage, and they would have heard him climb the stairs. "I think I know where he is."

But Sam wasn't in his room. He was in Dean's. He simply stood in the middle, simply looking around. "You can touch stuff," Dean offered quietly. Sam didn't jump. Like always, he knew it was Dean who had come into the room. Like Hell we can't fix him. Dean leaned on the doorway and gave Sam space. Maybe remembering would hurt him. But if they could get around that by letting him feel, letting his instincts guide him…

Sam nodded and picked up the picture of Dean and their mom, then set it carefully exactly where it had been. He barely touched the foot of the bed with a finger, then glanced over the LPs on top of Dean's dresser. He looked longer at the notes on Dean's table, a jot list of things to look up in search of the Darkness. Sam even looked at the dirty plate and fork Dean had left setting out. Then, as if working out a puzzle, Sam squinted at the mirror. He reached out almost tentatively and touched a tiny corner of paper that was peeking out from behind it.

Dean's stomach clenched, but he didn't say a word. There was no way Sam had just happened to see the miniscule edge – he had known it was there somehow. Dean wondered when Sam had first found his stash. When Dean was a demon? He shied from the thought and watched his brother, somehow childlike in his silent exploration. Sam pulled the 11x17 envelope out of its hiding spot and opened it slowly, as if waiting for Dean to stop him. But Dean was willing to be laid bare if it showed Sam the way back.

Dean didn't keep very many physical things, as he had lived too much of his life on the road. He had a handful of pictures and his dad's journal. But this envelope was full of the reminders that were too hard to look at most of the time. The things he still couldn't let go of.

The first thing Sam pulled out was an unassuming piece of paper that had been balled up and flattened back out. It contained only the words: Sammy, let me go. It was the most recent addition to the box. "You call me Sammy."

There was a hint of a question in it, so Dean nodded. "Nobody else really does, but yeah, sometimes I call you Sammy. It's…I called you that when you were a baby and it just pops out once in a while."

"It's pretty much all you've called me today. Or tonight, or whatever. It's…affectionate?"

"I don't know. Maybe." Dean didn't know what expression he made, but it made Sam smile. It was a shadow of his regular grin, gone almost as soon as it appeared, but it was there.

Dean watched, trying not to tense up while Sam's long fingers sorted through mementos of some of the most painful times of Dean's life. Sam's face was neutral, deliberately so. He laid aside Charlie's cootie catcher that had so confused Cas. A post it note that read KEVIN TRAN. He paused at a hospital band that had Sam's own name on it, but still said nothing. Address labels that some nonprofit had sent to Dean Winchester when he actually had an address, with Lisa and Ben. A picture fluttered to the floor, and Dean fought his instinct to grab it away and hide it. He must have made some kind of move, though, because Sam's eyes flicked to him before going back down to the picture.

In the photo, a tired but smiling Mary held a tiny bundle, its face barely visible between a blue hat and a white blanket. John sat, openly grinning, in a chair pushed as close to the hospital bed as it could get. On his lap was a blond boy, slightly blurry like he'd been moving as the photo had been taken. It was washed out with age, but the joy was visible on every face except the sleeping baby. Sam turned the picture over and read the careful cursive that said: Welcome, Baby Sammy! 5/2/83.

Sam traced the words, then turned back and peered at it, looking from the blond boy to Dean, then setting the picture down with exquisite care. "You really believe all of what you're saying, don't you?" he asked quietly.

"Guess one of us is seriously messed up right now. Maybe it's the one with the blinding headache." Dean quirked an eyebrow.

Sam sent a half-hearted glare back. "Stop doing that. I'm –"

"Let me guess. Fine. You're perfectly fine, and you left the light off for the ambiance."

"Sorry I came in your room," said Sam stiffly, ignoring the rest.

Dean shrugged. "Privacy isn't a big thing with us." He saw the rigid set of Sam's shoulders, the sharp line of his jaw, and knew he hadn't made as much progress as he wanted. Little brothers are a lot of work. "Look, Sam, when you're…you, you have some of the best instincts I've ever seen, not to mention a ridiculously oversized brain. What are your instincts telling you about me?"

"Godammit. I want to trust you, okay? I want to believe everything you say. But that doesn't make any sense. There's no reason for it. From everything I can see, you're living some insane fantasy that you'd like me to jump into with you for some reason. Because I don't remember anything about you. I don't remember your face when I look away for a minute. I can hardly remember your name." Sam was yelling by now, arms out to his side, straightened up to his full height, the way he reacted when he was just done with everything.

He huffed a breath and pointed at Dean. "And I sure as hell don't remember growing up next to you, or any salvage yard or…ugh!" He broke off with a gasp that had Dean surging toward him, because he knew well that a gasp of pain from Sam would be a scream from most people. As Dean grabbed his arm, Sam let loose a string of profanity that would have impressed John Winchester himself. It was another big cue that he was really hurting. Most people assumed – with some justification – that Dean had the dirtier mouth. But when Sam was truly hurt, or truly pissed, he could curse like a multilingual fishwife on steroids.

Actually, a memory Dean would cherish for a long time was when Crowley made an appearance shortly after the whole cluster in Superior with the evil fog. The demon hadn't gotten a single word out before Sam let loose with such a virulent and creative litany of exactly what he thought of Crowley, his parentage, natural physical form, proclivities, and character that Dean would swear there had been admiration on the king's face by the end of it. Crowley had simply left without ever stating what he wanted, seeming to realize that the Winchester many considered the more reasonable of the two was not to be reasoned with at this point.

In any case, Dean listened to the latest diatribe and subsequently upgraded his mental estimation of Sam's pain level from kicked in the balls with steel-toed boots to running barefoot over razor wire. He pulled Sam's arm over his own shoulders.

"Lemme g – "

Sam's legs buckled and his eyes rolled back, though he didn't completely lose consciousness. He gave a pained groan, and Dean upgraded him again, to unanesthetized surgery. He reverted instinctively to protective big brother mode. "Okay, I gotcha. Lean on me. Stop thinking, just walk." Dean ignored the part of his brain that said he was relieved that there was something he could actually help his brother with and concentrated on getting 6' 4" of wobble back to the hub where Cas was guarding the asshat of the day. Dean concealed his worry at how quickly Sam had gone from bitching to barely conscious.

If Robin didn't fix this immediately and completely, Dean was going to start cutting things off.